Letters Never Sent
by LaNuovaGiulietta
Summary: The year is 1926, and Castiel Novak is a university student secretly in love with his roommate, Dean Winchester. No one can ever know, especially not Dean. It would ruin their friendship, and that is not a risk that Cas is willing to take. So he pines away in silence.
1. Chapter 1

It was seven in the evening. Most people at Kansas U. were already out having a good time at various fraternity houses off campus, or better yet in the jazz bars and speakeasies on the west side of town, where the night life really got interesting. Most of the students were already drunk by now, or at least buzzed. Most of his friends were sitting in leather chairs at The Swing, being pawed at by mantis-like blonde women in scarlet lipstick. Cas Novak had no interest in any of that. At the moment, he was curled into the small closet in his dorm room, a typewriter between his knees, long and nimble fingers pounding at the round metal keys in a frenzy of inspiration. He looked at his watch in the yellowish light of the lamp he had pulled in with him, which was teetering precariously on a stack of boxes holding his winter clothes. His roommate, Dean Winchester, shouldn't be home for another four hours at the least. With that particular bit of gnawing anxiety tamed for the moment, he turned his attention back to the typewriter on the floor in front of him.  
Typewriters were ordinarily very loud of course, but in the repressive silence of the closet the clacking of the keys seemed deafening to Cas. A part of him imagined that at any moment someone would burst into the dorm room and shout his name, but the more rational - if slightly smaller - portion of his brain reasoned that the only people still in Grenwith Hall were his most studious classmates, and that his most studious classmates wouldn't very much care about the volume of his typewriter, nor to what use it was being put by one young brooding English major. He took a breath, one which smelled distinctly of moth balls and fabric softener, rolled up the sleeves of his dusty blue sweater, and set to writing again.

Dear Dean,

Suddenly, a volley of dangerous thoughts filled his quite active literary mind. What if Dean fell suddenly violently ill and came home (for certainly that was the only thing that could ever drag the fellow from an evening of drink) only to find his roommate hiding in the closet writing sordid letters to him that he would never have the courage to send? What if one of Dean's large, hairy-forearmed friends came in looking for something, discovered him, and decided to rat him out? Or worse? Dear God in Heaven, what could possibly be worse?  
"Stop it, Castiel." He said aloud to the sweaters and slacks that dangled over his head. "Stop it and write the damn letter. No one is here, and even if there were someone here, they wouldn't care about you and your childish love notes."  
Again, he put his fingers to the keys.

Dear Dean,  
I know that I've said this countless times, but you inspire me. No, you enthrall me. Your eyes are the green of emeralds, of clover in spring, and your lips are like David's: perfectly sculpted and made for kissing, but unreachable. I could never kiss you, Dean. To kiss you would be to sign away my life, for I would surely die of sinful satisfaction the moment we touched. My adoration for you, my love, burns too brightly. If logic is to be believed, this only means that it will be short lived. You have only been here at the university for three months, which in the grand scheme of things is a very limited period of time, but despite all of this, despite the cold facts that stunt my affection, I believe I will love you for a very long time, if not forever. I know, I know. We're both too young to be thinking about forever, but I can't seem to help myself. I can imagine the two of us on a farm, with horses and a border collie, far away from anything painful.

"Cas?"  
"Damnit."  
"Where are you?"  
"I'm in the closet."  
"Why are you in the closet?"  
"Because..."  
"Because?"  
"I'm.. writing. Sometimes I write in the closet."  
"Well come out."  
"Okay. ... Hey Dean?"  
"Yes?"  
"Can you help me up?"  
"You're such a fairy, Castiel."  
"I know..."

Dear Dean,  
I love you. 


	2. Feelings Never Mentioned

Dear Dean,  
I must have written a hundred letters to you by now. I wonder if I'll ever give any of them to you,  
or if I'll just keep wasting ink in this dorm closet and then stashing the pages in a box marked "ugly Christmas sweaters." The latter is the more likely scenario, since I am a coward and you are a flawless and incorrigable ladies' man. Amost every night, you're out at parties and clubs until at least three in the morning. Most of the women you sleep with are just dumb tomatoes, but... who am I to judge? I don't sleep with any women. Or any men, for that matter. I tried once, with a girl in my chemistry class my second year of high school. She was a redhead, and very beautiful. We got drunk on cheap schnapps and white wine in the basement of my cousin's house... long story short, it was terrible. She wasn't exactly a virtuous girl. She knew what she was doing, knew what to expect. I didn't. She was very disappointed and I was very...well, the only word that comes to mind is "sad." After we made love, I felt very lonely, even before she left. When she was finally gone, I laid there for a long time and stared at the ceiling. I woud have cried, but I just felt numb. I tried again a few times with different girls, but it was always the same. Cold. Impersonal. Vaguely depressing. Eventually I stopped seeking out women and dedicated myself to my studies. I became an honor student, and then a tutor for underclassmen. I got into college a year early on a full scholarship with a focus in Greek literature and Biblical studies. I bought a typewriter from a Polish woman and started writing poetry. Then I met you.  
I don't actually remember too many details about the day you moved in. I was probably half-dead from an all-nighter of cross referencing various pieces of obscure verse by writers long dead and buried (or, in the Greek fashion, burned on a ritual pyre), and you were probably hung out like a wet sheet. But I do remember hearing you laugh. Maybe someone in the hall had made a joke. Maybe you had found something in your bags that brought up an amusing memory. Maybe your laughter was at my expense. I don't recall. But the emotion that your laughter surfaced in me remains clear in my mind and constant in my heart. To this day, I would do anything to make you laugh. Unfortunately, I am not the comic type. I try to be funny and usually come off as stiff and awkward. For all my knowledge of the English language, of grammar and synyax, when I try to tell a joke I sound as if I am speaking English aloud for the first time. Maybe that's because I don't really talk to people. I just sit here in my room, in my closet, writing, be it poems or vignettes or essays for a class, or love letters to you. Do you ever wonder what I'm doing when you're out with your friends? Do you ever wonder what I'm writing about when you leave the dorm at seven in the evening, what I am sometimes still writing about when you come home close to sunrise? When you come back in to find me fast asleep over my typewriter, do you ever stop to read what's typed on the page? Do you know?

Cas looked up when he heard Dean's key in the lock, the tumblers turning, the bolt sliding into place with a clean sound like two stones clicking under water. He was fast, as always. By the time Dean was inside the dorm room, Cas was already in bed with the covers pulled up to his shoulders, eyes closed, pretending with all his acting ability to be sleeping very deeply. Dean dropped his jacket on the floor unceremoniously and groaned, running his fingers through his hair and down over his eyes, which he rubbed hard with the heels of his hands. "Cas. You awake?"  
"Mmmnn."  
"Sorry."  
"Dean?"  
"Yeah."  
"What time is it?"  
"Midnight. I had to come home early. The blue shirts showed up at Bobby's and I can't get caught drinking again. Those damn booze bookers are already on my tail." He paused, and Castiel - his eyes still closed - heard the rustle of fabric against skin that meant Dean was undressing. He flushed, grateful that Dean had left the lights off. "That wouldn't be a problem if you didn't drink."  
"Oh, don't give me that malarky."  
"It's true." Cas opened his eyes and sat up. Dean was naked aside from his white underwear and black socks, and again he thanked God for the cover of darkness. "I don't mean to sound like your brother, but maybe your grades would be better of you spent less time on beer and more time on books."  
"Maybe you wouldn't be such a Johnny Stiff-Back if you let loose once in awhile."

"I'm sorry."  
"I know."  
"It's just... it's been a rough night."  
"Something go wrong with your latest conquest?"  
"Yeah."  
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The silence was a taut wire between them, and finally Cas had to say something. He cleared his throat, but his voice still wavered.  
"Was it worth it?"  
"Not really. She was hot stuff, a real cat, but it turns out she had a boyfriend. Let's just say old Kozlow didn't take too kindly to me burgling his girl." That was when Cas noticed the bruises. In the dark of their dorm room, they almost looked like shadows, but one on Dean's upper arm was distinctly hand-  
shaped. A sudden very powerful anger swelled inside Cas like a tidal wave and he stood. Before he could get very far (it's not like he knew where he was going anyway), Dean's hands were on his shoulders, Dean's crystalline green eyes boring into his, glacial. "Stop. Okay? It's over."  
"I am very angry."  
"I can tell. Calm down."  
"I don't approve of people behaving violently toward you." Dean steered Cas to a chair and sat him down. "Listen. I'm not some Catholic schoolboy. I can handle a scrap just fine."  
"Not when you're drunk. Alcohol in large doses effects your equilibrium and makes you more vulnerable to injury. You get hit, you get dizzy, you go down. And someone who's as drunk as you are won't stop swinging just because you're on the floor."  
"Jesus Joseph and Mary, man. What's gotten into you?"  
"What do you mean? I haven't ingested anything strange recently..."  
"You need sleep. You study too much; your brains are boiling."  
"You're probably right."  
Forcefully ignoring the sulfurous rage bubbling in the pit of his stomach (not that you could tell since he epressed anger the way that most normal people expressed extreme boredeom), Cas laid back down, this time leaving the bankets around his waist. He listened as Dean did the same, waited until he started snoring, and got up again. He closed the closet door before turning on the lamp so that the light wouldn't wake up Dean, then sat down on the floor again and started typing.

Dear Dean,  
You are an idiot. 


End file.
